The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in present-day Liberia.

African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group who as defined by the United States census, consists of Americans who have ancestry from "any of the Black populations of Africa". African Americans constitute the second largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. According to annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2024, the Black population was estimated at 42,951,595, representing approximately 12.63% of the total U.S. population.

The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C.

Colonization is a process of establishing control over areas or peoples for foreign people to advance their trade, cultivation, exploitation and possibly settlement. Colonization functions through establishing a differentiation between the area and people of the colonized and colonizers, establishing metropoles, coloniality and possibly outright colonies. Colonization is commonly pursued and maintained by, but distinct from, imperialism, mercantilism, or colonialism. Conquest can take place without colonisation, but a conquering process may often result in or from migration and colonising. The term "colonization" is sometimes used synonymously with the word "settling", as with colonisation in biology.